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Throwing His Hat Into the Ring at Last, Will Sarko Lose His Head Too?

Pool photo by Thibault Camus/ReutersFrance’s President Nicolas Sarkozy pictured outside the Grand Palais in Paris on the eve of announcing his candidacy for a second term.

LONDON — President Nicolas Sarkozy will finally put 43 million French voters out of their misery on Wednesday night by belatedly confirming that he plans to stand for a second term in April.

The 57-year-old, center-right career politician has deftly attempted to give the impression that he was far too busy addressing the nation’s multiple challenges to get around to declaring his candidacy earlier.

The French electorate is perhaps not so easily fooled. As my colleague Andrew Rosenthal wrote recently in the opinion pages, “Sarko” has been trailing in opinion polls for months and the gap between him and his main rival, Socialist Party candidate François Hollande, seems to be widening.

From a Europe-wide perspective, interest will focus on whether the two-round French election, scheduled for April 22 and May 6, delivers yet another defeat for the Continent’s incumbent leaders.

A string of European governments were ousted in the past 12 months on the basis of their performance in tackling an economic downturn and the ensuing debt crisis. Just a year ago, Ireland’s Fianna Fáil was swept from power in the worst defeat for a government in the state’s 90-year history.

That was followed by the fall of government leaders in six other Euro zone nations, including Greece, Italy and Spain, either via the ballot box or in the midst of political crises associated with the economy. In Spain, the Socialist Workers’ Party lost in November to the conservative People’s Party by a record margin.

The backlash against incumbents has punished the right as much as the left. Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, a flamboyant right-winger who served three terms as prime minister, was finally forced to quit in November after losing his majority in parliament as the country’s debt problems piled up.

In Greece, worst hit by the Euro zone’s debt problems, George Papandreou, the socialist prime minister, had quit the previous week to make way for a national unity government.

The economic downturn has proved to be bad news for the European political “glitterati” who came to power in more prosperous times. Greece and Italy are now run by more anonymous technocrats better suited to the spirit of the age.

Although perhaps marginally less expansive than Mr. Berlusconi, Mr. Sarkozy – “President Bling Bling”, according to a popular nickname – may also suffer an image problem when voters head to the polling booths.

The excitement generated four years ago by his marriage to Carla Bruni, the Italian-born singer and actress, now seems very 2008.

The bourgeoisie has always regarded the president as a bit of an upstart, as my colleague Roger Cohen has written in the opinion pages. But now, in more straightened times, a wider range of voters appear to have become less enamored of the glamorous first couple.

The latest backlash came when residents of Nogent-Sur-Marne this week protested plans to erect a statue modeled after Mme. Bruni-Sarkozy in tribute to the town’s Italian immigrant population.

“It’s great to pay homage to the Italian immigrants here…and it’s true that Carla Bruni is a very beautiful Italian woman,” Valerie Geoffrey, a marketing specialist, told Associated Press. “But, unfortunately, I don’t think the face of Carla Bruni on the head of this statue is well suited to this situation.”